


You I Cannot Reach

by AyanoTateyama



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Gen, dubious consent but nothing really happens, he has creepy triggering anxiety dreams that skirt sex dream territory, not nsfw as it merely mentions shintaro's porn, shintaro doesn't have sex dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1806019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyanoTateyama/pseuds/AyanoTateyama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shintaro dreams of her, and sometimes she is warm, but sometimes she is icy, and her fingers bleed through his shirt and burn him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You I Cannot Reach

**Author's Note:**

> i read the part in the novels where shintaro dreams that ayano reprimands him for watching porn and i wanted to write something a bit more fucked up.

He find himself walking through the corridor again, his every step echoing in the silence of the empty hallway. The thud of his feet is dull. His backpack slides across his shoulders, and everything feels slow and heavy, like it's been submerged in honey.

"What are you doing?" A voice rings out, crisp as the biting wind of a winter day, across the corridor. 

Shintaro freezes. His heart pounds. The sound of his breathing reverberates through his head. 

"Didn't you hear me? I said, what are you doing?" 

Her voice sticks in his mind, echoes in the crevices. He recognized whose it was immediately, but there is something off about it from the very first syllable. The tone is all wrong. 

"I-" he chokes out, throat dry, "I'm just going home, Aya-" 

"Really. And what will you do there?" She strides toward him, her shoes clacking on the tiles. Shintaro still hasn't turned around to look at her, not with that reproachful tone in her voice. He is sure if he did, he would only see a black silhouette against the orange of the sunset. 

(He never sees her face clearly in his dreams anyway.) 

He clutches the straps of his backpack. "H-homework." 

Her footfalls stop. The silence overflows in the corridor. He imagines it spilling from the windows and deafening the outside world. 

"Homework," she repeats, "What's with a straight A student like you having homework all afternoon?" 

Her heels click again, faster, against the floor, cutting through the quiet. Before he knows it, she is right behind him, pulling on his hand and turning him around to face her. He drops the backpack to the floor, palms clammy. 

"I think we both know you won't be doing any homework." 

Ayano stares at him, expression harsh and unchanging. Orange light filters through her hair, turning it brown. Her eyes are dark, her face in shadow, and her lips curl in spite. She isn't wearing her scarf. Her hand is still on his arm. 

"Wh-what are y-" 

"You'll be watching those 18-and-over shows. Or maybe you'll be reading X-rated manga. In either case, that's not really homework." 

"W-wh-where did you- where would you get that th-that idea? I don't-" 

"No, I'm pretty sure you do. There's no way to deny it," she interrupts, stepping over his backpack and slowly but surely guiding him against the wall. Her skirt rustles. Her thighs touch his own. Her hand burns his arm through his uniform. Shintaro's hands are clammy and his throat is tight. He tries to swallow, but instead just coughs up the saliva. 

Ayano still watches him with lidded eyes. "I can't believe you're dreaming about this." His back hits the wall. "About me. Like this." Her hand shifts to his chest and stays there, putting light pressure yet pinning him there. He doesn't dare move. 

"Are you turned on, even?" Her eyes flick down, then up again. "Disgusting." 

Everything about this is surreal and way too much. Shintaro can't breathe fast enough. His legs wobble. He feels like crying at Ayano's voice, at her repulse, at how strange she's behaving, at the way the sun's rays illuminate the dust in the air but not her eyes, which look blacker than night and twice as cold. 

(He wants to see her smiling, but he doesn't deserve to.) 

Her hand crumples in his shirt, holding the material tightly, then smooths over it again, and slides down, down, down to the waistband of his jeans. His breath hitches. She does not blink. 

"Do you want this?" 

"I- n-no." 

"Isn't this your fantasy?" 

"No. Yes? I-I don't know." 

"What _do_ you know?" 

_(That I miss you.)_

"I'm not sure." 

"Are you forgetting?" 

"No, never! I would never!" 

"Are you sure? Could you forget the real me if you never even knew her?" 

"I..." 

"So you have forgotten. Or maybe you never knew at all." 

"No, I knew! I knew you, and, and I knew you would think I'm disgusting now, and that I don't deserve to be in your presence, and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." 

"Fantasizing about a girl whose death you're responsible for? Who do you think you are?" Ayano's hand slides up to his neck, thumbing the skin above his jugular. 

_(A monster who left you to cry alone. To die alone.)_

"I didn't mean to. I'm sorry," he whispers, "I'm so sorry for everything." 

"You're so pathetic," she says, and it sounds like Ene but not, because Ene's voice is loud and cheerful and takes fun in all her taunting, but this voice is repulsed, only quiet and repulsed. 

"I'm sorry," he answers. 

Ayano retracts her hand from him. The heat on Shintaro's neck fades but the itch of a healing burn remains. 

Ayano walks off to the direction of the classrooms, her silhouette dark and blurry against the disappearing sun. Its rays flood the hallway, and Shintaro notices that the sun hasn't moved from its position at the horizon ever since Ayano stopped him. 

He whips around to check for Ayano, but she blends into the thick dust swirling in the air. 

"W-wait, Ayano, don't go!" 

_(Don't leave me.)_

The corridor stretches on forever, and he starts running after her, but his legs feel like cement, and the air rips into his lungs, and he is going moving way too slowly, like walking through gelatin. 

(He knows he can't reach her.) 

She has already faded into specks of dust. 

He bolts out of his bed at 11:48 a.m., with sweat soaking his T-shirt and the sun slanting through the blinds. 

He takes shallow breaths, as if he is out of air, and he feels like throwing up. 

Shintaro clutches his bedspread and examines the state of his room, and he knows that she will disapprove of everything he is and everything he tries to be. His head aches already and he throws himself on the bed again, thinking about how even in his dreams he cannot be someone worthy of her, whom she can admire.

**Author's Note:**

> shintaro probably thinks about ayano and how he is a speck of nothing (compared to her) almost every day since her death and that's sort of fucked up too.


End file.
